Can Working Women be Good Mothers?

image courtesy of my friend, Teya Sabado

There is another debate topic that I wrote for over at Helium and I want to share it with all of you my dear readers. Well, as in any debate, there is a “pro and a con”, “yes and no” side and I went for pro/yes side because I am a working mom and I believe I have a chance at being good at mothering as well as professionally. This piece is quite long but I hope the content more than makes up for the trouble you go through in reading it.

Disclaimer: This was originally submitted in a debate. I am not saying that working women are better mothers than those who opt to stay at home full time. My point here is that working moms can be as good mothers as those who stay at home full time. That should make me avoid displeasing anyone, hehehe!

Read on…
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Majority of mothers who work outside the home do so because of their desire to give their children and family a better life. That alone, is a trait of a good mother. It is unfair for people to think that working moms prioritize their careers over their families, or worse, that they do not care what becomes of their children while they are working their socks off in the office.

On the contrary, most of these hardworking women hurt inside whenever they are not in PTA meetings or are not there when their little angels come home from school. It’s just that they are made of tougher substance, with stronger determination and clearer vision for them and their families. At the end of the day, these women who have the strength to set aside their own feelings for the sake of the whole family, are heroes in their own right.

Let’s face it, the times are different now. Gone are the days when families can subsist on single incomes. Nowadays, it is almost impossible for most of us to put food on the table and send the kids to school without both parents working. Which is more acceptable, a woman with education and skills choosing to stay at home and leave all the breadwinning to the father while her whole family hardly makes do, or someone with initiative, willing to walk the tightrope to strike a balance between family and career, so that the children are well-fed and clothed and given good education? Would you rather admire a woman who contents herself with staying at home hiding behind the pretense of being a “good mom” while she cannot even tell if her children will ever have the chance to get to college, or someone who takes matters into her own hands and sets up a system which allows her to work while raising her children so that she can provide for them a better quality of life?

The crux of this whole debate lies on the definition of a “good mother”. There are as many definitions as there are people who attempt to define her. One way to describe a good mother is her character. Is she caring, loving, affectionate or considerate? Does she put her family’s needs above her own? Or is she selfish and vain and spiteful?

If we go by character to describe a good mother, it means that being a good mother does not rest on what she does (i.e., working versus staying at home), but rather, on her attributes that define her mothering style. Therefore, a working mother can be a good mother as much as a stay-at-home mother can.

A good mother can also be defined by her parenting style. Is she strict with enforcing the rules? Does she see to it that her children are disciplined early on in life so that they grow up to be responsible and upright individuals? Or, does she spoil them to bits and forget about character building, so that every whim and fancy of the children is catered to?

Again, parenting style does not have anything to do with a mom’s having a job or staying at home. It is about her determination to train her children to be mature, responsible and behaved individuals. She may have lesser time to monitor her children’s behavior in a day, or to spend quality time with each one of them to build up their trust and confidence, but that does not mean that a working mom cannot possibly raise disciplined kids. It’s all a matter of balancing work and family and time management, stuff that working moms easily understand and practice.

Only those who define a good mother by the time she spends at home are stupid enough to argue that those women who work outside the home can never be good mothers.

Being a good mother and a successful career woman is not that difficult anymore. For one, there are a lot of options now for career women who want to spend more time with their children and families. Work-from-home options are already available, and so are jobs that have night or weekend shifts, so that husband and wife can alternate looking after the children. But even women working regular hours can still possibly perform well as parents.

The key to becoming a good mother and be successful at work is to strike a balance between what the family needs and what one can give to their job. In fact, working can even enhance one’s mothering abilities. There are different life skills that a woman can develop in the workplace that she can also apply at home to improve her home management.

For example, an office-working mom should be technology-savvy enough to make use of modern gadgets to manage the home while away. Yes, technology can help a lot in making up for lack of time to spend at home. There is the telephone to check on the children wherever they are. A GPS device tells mom where her darling daughter is anytime of the day. Computer software to put a cyber-fence around the children’s internet surfing are also available so that they can work on their assignments even while Mom is still in the office.

Weekly-planned menus, pre-cooked frozen food and trained older siblings on home management are also great helps to a busy but efficient mother. The organizational and negotiation skills developed in the workplace puts Mom at an advantage when planning and preparing the family’s food for the whole week during weekends, assigning chores to each of the kids, and dividing workload between herself and Dad.

For single mothers, it is a little more challenging if not tricky to balance home and office life, but there should be a way to go about it. There are family and friends to help as child minders. There are government support of all kinds for them, too. While the children are young, it can become very daunting, but as they grow older and more independent, any single mother can wing it.

We cannot deny that there are working moms that fail miserably in this delicate balancing act. But that does not mean that they are not good mothers. They just have to put in more effort but they can get there as well as the others.

A good mother is one who is willing to give of herself to her family, someone who is flexible enough to adjust her expectations from life in order to ensure that those dearest to her are well-provided for, protected, loved and assured a better future. Thad does not depend on whether she has a monthly paycheck or not.

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